Whole lotta hatin’ going on in certain Internet boards regarding reigning Team Universe champ Michael Lockett’s amazing win at the Junior Nationals last month. It was amazing for one thing because Lockett had passed up the chance to become a professional bodybuilder. For another, he was still stating in interviews that he is a drug-free athlete. Hence the hatin’. As a friend of mine who knows Lockett, believes him and is not naïve on the subject of bodybuilding drugs put it, “Nobody is going to believe, at 244 pounds, that he is drug-free. He could win 10 T.U.s, and people still won’t believe it.”
For those not in the know about how the Team Universe Championships works, Lockett, as the overall winner of the NPC’s highest-level drug-tested bodybuilding competition, earned the right to turn pro last summer. After toying with the idea of getting pro status right away, he decided in favor of gaining more experience as well as muscle while continuing to conquer goals in the NPC. Based on his performance in Chicago at the Juniors, there’s no question he’s got the stuff to make it in untested as well as tested waters.
In an audio interview I did with him the morning after his Team Universe win last summer (and before his 12th-place landing at the IFBB World Amateur Championships in October), Lockett wasn’t sure he would take the pro card. The ex-boxer had, after all, only been bodybuilding a couple of years and had competed in just a handful of shows. Word is now that he’d like to go back to the Worlds and do some damage.
If you have javascript enabled, click to hear that interview—and learn a bit about the background of this swiftly rising bodybuilding star. You can also find it in my audio reports, at left.
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